Chaplin’s World, Manoir de Ban

1952: Charlie Chaplin’s Swiss exile

In September 1952, as he was crossing the Atlantic to present “Limelight” in Europe, Charlie Chaplin learned that the United States had revoked his re-entry visa.

On the advice of his half-brother Sydney the family moved to Switzerland, settling at the Manoir de Ban on 6 January 1953. He lived there for twenty-five years, until his death on Christmas Day 1977. His wife Oona and several of their children remained there long after him.

Charlie Chaplin, composer of his own films

The first musician in the house was Chaplin himself. Over more than fifty years he wrote close to nine hundred minutes of film music and some twenty published songs, without ever having learned to read or write a note: he sang or played his ideas to musicians who transcribed them. It was at the Manoir de Ban, on his Steinway, that he composed the scores of his final years and rewrote the music for his silent films.

Eugène Chaplin, from the manor to Mountain Studios

It was here that Eugène Chaplin grew up, the couple’s fifth child, born in 1953. Trained in theatre in Geneva, he turned to sound recording in the mid-1970s and joined Mountain Studios in Montreux as an assistant engineer, in the years when the studio was recording the greatest names.

The Chaplin family thus links silent cinema to the console used by Queen, David Bowie and Iggy Pop.

Michael Jackson at the Manoir de Ban

Michael Jackson, who stayed regularly in Montreux to work, came to the Manoir de Ban several times. In January 1997 he visited the house, paid his respects at Chaplin’s grave and dined with the family. He held a lasting admiration for Chaplin, whose “Smile”, the melody written for “Modern Times”, he recorded.

2016: the Chaplin’s World museum

In April 2016, after fifteen years of preparation, the estate became the Chaplin’s World museum. The visit, lasting about two and a half hours, unfolds in three parts: the Manor, which tells the private and family life; the Studio, a new building devoted to the films, the beginnings of cinema and the century Chaplin lived through; and the fourteen-hectare park, opening onto Lake Geneva and the Alps.

An audio-guided mobile app accompanies the visit with archive images, and the estate houses a shop set up in Chaplin’s former Bentley garage as well as the Café The Tramp.

Each summer the park also hosts open-air concerts, facing the lake. The grave of Charlie and Oona Chaplin lies a few minutes away, in the cemetery of Corsier-sur-Vevey.